Woodcut, engraving, etching and lithography: the difference between the printmaking techniques

The difference between etching, engraving and woodcut lies in where the ink sits. In a woodcut the raised parts of a wooden block print (relief printing). In engraving and etching the ink sits in lines sunk into a metal plate (intaglio): in engraving the lines are ploughed out with a steel tool, in etching they are bitten by acid. Lithography is printed from a flat stone with grease and water (planographic printing), and screenprinting through a mesh (stencil printing).

Facts

Prints: one image in many copies

Prints are images printed from a matrix, a block, plate, stone or mesh, so that the same image can exist in many copies. Each impression is an original, but not unique like a painting. For that reason printmaking early on became a way of spreading images: pictures of saints and Bible illustrations in the 15th century, maps and reproductions of paintings in the following centuries, posters and artists' prints in the 19th century.

The techniques are divided into four families according to where the ink sits when the paper is pressed against the matrix. The explanatory diagram further down shows four of them in cross-section, step by step. Also read the section on techniques in Looking at art, and look up the terms in the glossary.

The woodcut: relief printing

The woodcut is the oldest technique. The artist draws the image in mirror image on a smooth block of wood and cuts away everything that is to be white. What remains are the lines, standing as raised ridges, which are inked with a roller and printed like a stamp. The lines are therefore often bold and angular, with clear contrasts between black and white.

Albrecht Dürer pushed the woodcut to a new refinement in the series the Apocalypse of 1498, where the lines are almost as dense as in an engraving. In Japan the colour woodcut became an art form of its own, with one block for each colour: Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa and Hiroshige's Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi Bridge are printed that way; read the guide to ukiyo-e. Around 1900 Edvard Munch took up the woodcut again and let the grain of the wood show in the print.

A closely related relief technique is wood engraving, in which one engraves into end grain instead of cutting along the fibres. It gives very fine lines and was used for book illustrations in the 19th century.

Engraving and etching: intaglio

In engraving, the engraver ploughs V-shaped furrows into a polished copper plate with a burin. The line swells and tapers according to how deep the steel goes, and it often ends in a point. The plate is inked, the surface wiped clean and the paper pressed with great pressure into the furrows in a rolling press. The technique demands great skill and gives a clear, regular line. Dürer's Knight, Death and the Devil of 1513 and Melencolia I of 1514 are two of the best-known engravings.

Etching is printed in the same way but made more freely. The plate is covered with a thin ground of wax and resin, and the artist draws in it with a needle, almost as with a pencil. The plate is then placed in acid, which bites out the lines where the metal is exposed. The lines are softer, more sketch-like and have blunt ends. Rembrandt made etching an artistic language of its own, with deep shadows that he built up in several successive states. Francisco de Goya combined etching with aquatint, a technique for toned areas, in the series Los Caprichos of 1799.

Drypoint is a third intaglio technique: the line is scratched directly into the plate, and the burr of metal thrown up gives a velvety, soft-edged line. It wears quickly, so the editions were small.

Lithography and screenprinting

Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in Munich in the 1790s. The artist draws with greasy crayon or ink on a ground limestone. The stone is dampened, and the greasy printing ink sticks only to the drawing because grease and water repel each other. Nothing is cut or etched, and the line has the same grainy, soft character as a chalk drawing. With several stones one could print in colour, and in the 1890s colour lithography became the technique of the poster, in the hands of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Alphonse Mucha; see posters in the design section.

Screenprinting presses ink through a fine mesh in which the areas that are not to print are blocked off. The ink lies in even, flat layers. Andy Warhol used the technique to repeat the same image, as in Campbell’s Soup Cans, and made it the hallmark of Pop art.

How to recognise the technique

Start by looking for a plate mark, an indented edge around the image. It arises when a metal plate is pressed into the paper and reveals an intaglio print: engraving, etching or drypoint. Then look at the lines. If they swell evenly and end in a point, it is probably an engraving; if they are free, trembling and blunt at the ends, it is an etching; if they are slightly blurred and velvety, it may be drypoint.

If there is no plate mark and the lines are bold and angular, with white areas that seem cut out, it is probably a woodcut. If the image looks like a chalk drawing, with no relief in the paper, it is probably a lithograph. Flat, opaque fields of colour lying on top of the paper suggest screenprinting. In a museum the technique is always on the label, but it is more fun to guess first. Compare with the techniques of painting in the guide to fresco, tempera and oil.

How to tell them apart

Exercise

A print has an indented edge around the image and free, sketch-like lines with blunt ends. Which technique is it probably?